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Aid for Trade and Development Results

A Management Framework

This study presents a tool to help design logical frameworks for results-based management of aid for trade. What are donors and partner countries trying to achieve? Three different levels of possible objectives (i.e. direct, intermediate and final) are explored. Trade is treated as an intermediate objective, serving as a transmission mechanism, with an increase in the value for trade as the final objective. Six case studies - Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Rwanda, Solomon Islands and Viet Nam - provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges involved in introducing a tool for managing results in an agenda that covers a broad area of interventions that are aimed at building trade-related supply side capacities.

Managing aid for trade and development results in Bangladesh

The case study of Bangladesh focuses on trade facilitation, which is an area of increasing priority in the broader aid-for-trade agenda. The study provides a template for an aid-fortrade facilitation results framework, an assessment of the human and institutional capacity required to implement such a framework, and suggestions on how to introduce it in a manner that promotes mutual accountability between the executing agencies and donors active in Bangladesh. In assessing four trade facilitation projects in Bangladesh, the study finds that some performance indicators were used, although they were mainly selected by the donors. Furthermore, the indicators were not closely related to programme outcomes and impacts. Thus, the study argues that the trade-related results framework needs to be more broad-based and also include trade facilitation specific indicators, such as those developed, amongst others, by multilateral organisations. Finally, the study suggests that the recommended trade facilitation results-based framework not only is useful for Bangladesh, but also for trade facilitation projects in other developing countries with similar levels of trade and logistics capacity.